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I recently did a reading at a library where I was promoting my new book, Keeper of Light and Dust.  When it came to question time, someone in the audience asked me what makes writers "tick".   I ended up giving a convoluted and rather pompous explanation about creative energy and how it is a writer's "second heartbeat" and "cannot be denied".

It was really too bad of me, because last year I had attended a wonderful lecture on the topic of creative energy hosted by PEN and The British Medical Research Council and I should have been able to give a more inspired answer.

The panelists at this lecture consisted of eminent scientists and writers - among them Ian McEwan, author of Atonement.  Mr. McEwan asserted that creativity is an ongoing process - not a fleeting spark - and that in order to create, creativity has "to become a habit"  for writers and scientists alike.  He also listed persistence, tolerance of drudgery, luck, playfulness, ambition and ruthlessness as characteristics shared by both groups.  I concur, although my brother --who is a trained physicist--, has a different idea of playfulness than my own. (For those of you, who have seen WALL-E, think of the scene where Eve dances inside WALL-E's home.)

Ruth Padel, poet and another panelist, quoted a review of The Good Soldier in which the critic stated that he considered Ford Maddox Ford to be "a brilliant writer but not a great one," giving as his reason that Ford never gave himself over to "determined stupor."  Whether you agree with this reviewer or not, you have to love that phrase.  It is true that writers are obsessives and are often both dogged and dazed when they create.  I believe it is when you write in a blind fury with a complete disregard for whether it is going to sell, whether it will please your editor, even, whether it will please the reader, that you start to soar.  Or bomb.  Both hold true.  By quieting those outside voices and only listening to your own, you can either produce a work of profound imagination that speaks true, or a piece of writing that is so self-indulgent no reader should be asked to suffer through it.

Maybe Faulkner had the best answer as to what it is that makes a writer tick.  He once said, "An artist is a creature visited by demons.  He doesn't know why they choose him and he's usually too busy to wonder why."  Not all productive people are artists, of course, and whether the creative urge always equals excellence is another matter:  even people who are endlessly productive (and this includes commercially successful artists and writers) often find that their ability lags behind their compulsion.  It is that old conundrum of your reach exceeding your grasp.  But it matters not:  when the desire to create and give expression to your inner life is hardwired into your genes, you have to give into it.

Which of course brings me right back to the answer I gave the reader at my library event.  I may have been on to something after all?

Natasha Mostert, Keeper of Light and Dust, Dutton, Penguin Books